Metco

The METCO board of directors has elected Darnell Billings, METCO board member and alumnus, to the position of chair of the board.

As a student in the METCO program, Nicholas Vance used to wake up at 5:30 every morning to prepare for an hour-long bus ride from his home in Mattapan to school in Bedford. Now an education specialist and strategic initiatives manager at the National Grid, Vance said the “academic rigor” his suburban school offered was worth the hassle.

Six expansion plans dashed

Before federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity’s school desegregation order in 1974 led to an explosion of white opposition in some Boston neighborhoods, Black leaders had spent about a decade trying just about everything they could to secure a better education for their community’s children.

A new initiative from METCO is designed to help participating school districts improve racial equity and anti-racism programing within their suburban schools.

MIT Professor Karilyn Crockett was just born the year before federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered the Boston Public Schools to desegregate, but noted her grandmother joined the lawsuit because she felt even the separate but unequal schools back in West Virginia served Black students better.

As a rookie reporter with the Bay State Banner close to 40 years ago, I was assigned a story about a METCO student expelled for allegedly stealing from a student locker in one of the pricey suburbs west of Boston. After interviewing the student, a kid from Dorchester, and a school administrator, I filed the story, which seemed pretty straightforward. But something was clearly eating the editor, Melvin B. Miller, as he bent over the copy in the newsroom.

Local education organizers and elected officials gathered Tuesday for the opening of the new headquarters of METCO in Nubian Square and to celebrate a 55-year-long legacy of working to improve diversity and educational opportunities.